


Fated

by Inu_Sama



Series: HP FICS [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, BAMF Harry, Bad Dumbledore, Dark Harry, Dumbledore Bashing, F/F, F/M, M/M, Meddling Dumbledore, Slow To Update, Smart Harry Potter, Time Loop, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-03
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2019-01-08 14:18:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12256077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inu_Sama/pseuds/Inu_Sama
Summary: Being MOD is so not what he expected it to be. It wasn't just the fancy title the stories said it would be, no, it was a bloody pain in the ass! Harry is stuck living out his life over and over again and now he just doesn't give a shit. Death can't help him - doesn't even want to - and he's out of options. Immortality was not all it was cracked up to be.





	1. Prologue

Whether it was Potter Luck, or some weird twist of fate; Harry was just glad to be alive.... again. Eternity stuck with no one to talk to, nothing to look at or even having a physical body was possibly the worst torture Harry had experienced in his long life. Which was saying a lot.

Though he wasn't looking forward to the next few years as being stuck with the Dursleys again was a very unpleasant thought that he tried not to focus on. Harry let out a long-suffering sigh as the events of Halloween played out all over again.

Really, this was the fifth time already. Why couldn't he just skip to the good bits? He wanted to see his home again, Hogwarts had never been the same after the muggles found out about magic...

Harry barely bat an eye when his mother once again sacrificed herself for her son. Though he wasn't without regret, being forced to watch the only person that had really loved you die over and over again made him almost desensitised to it by now. Sometimes he wished she would make a different choice, vary herself from the obstinate other Lily Potters who unwaveringly stood against the mortal face of death every time.

But in the end, she lay dead on the beige carpet of little Harry's nursery. Harry met the red eyes of his soon to be arch nemesis unflinchingly. With all the shit he has faced, the snake-faced git hardly frightened him as he once might have.

There was confusion and curiosity in Voldemort's eyes, but strangely also a sense of resignation.

' _That was different...'_ Harry thought to himself, subconsciously cocking his head to the side in contemplation. Still, the yew wand was once again raised and sickly green light flashed before his eyes. As baby Harry's eyes readjusted to the once again dark room, something was wrong.

Shocked red eyes brimming with tears stared down at him as pale skeletal fingers gripped the railing of the cot. On a sudden whim, Harry reached forward to place a chubby hand on the ice cold fingers before him.

Electricity buzzed pleasantly under Harry's skin and he cooed in delighted surprise. It was then he noticed the cracks forming beneath his small hand. They spread like a web up Voldemort’s arm and they both watched in morbid fascination. Once the cracks had deepened like broken china, they locked eyes. 

“No… Not again…” Voldemort whispered, the tears finally spilling over onto pale cheeks.

Then it came to an end in a blast of magic that ruined the nursery just as it had last time, and Voldemort was gone.

Harry stared wide-eyed at the pile of black robes on the carpet in front of him.


	2. Chapter One

He wanted to kill them. Harry grit his teeth as the ruler once again came down on his fingers.

“Repent! Repent! Repent!” The Head Nun commanded in a toneless voice, punctuating each word with a _whack_ to Harry’s hands. He ignored the snickering fools behind him, they would have their turn soon enough. After the final hit, Harry was free to go.

“Maybe this will teach you to follow the rules!” The matron called as Harry let the door close softly behind him. He would only get in more trouble if he slammed it like he wanted to. And he _really_ wanted to. Harry tried to hold onto his anger, managing to make it all the way to his hiding place before finally exploding. When he had first arrived at the age of eight, Harry had immediately set up a small space for himself where he could practice magic. Now he used the magic field in the attic filled with dummies to let off some steam.

He screamed every bad word under the sun at the straw dummies as he flung spell after spell, not even caring if he hit his target or not. He was too mad. The spells gradually grew darker and more dangerous the angrier he got. It was a long time before his magic reserves were exhausted and by then he was heaving on the floor, throat hoarse from yelling and sweat slicking his dark hair to his forehead. He hated it here, Brutus’ Home for Criminal Boys was _way_ worse than his time spent with the Dursley's. In all his lives - which was saying something. Something cold slithered over his bruised fingers and he smiled.

 _~Isss hatchling hurt?~_ Penny asked, climbing further up his arm until they were nose to nose. Snakes didn’t have things like ‘personal space’ and no matter how many times Harry explained it to her, she could never grasp the concept.

She didn’t see a reason to.

 _~No, I’m fine. I’m just ssick of this place.~_ He hissed back, gently stroking her head. She was only a small garden snake, after all. Although most people wouldn’t consider a meter long snake to be ‘small’. But she was skinny and that made her look smaller and more fragile. Penny didn’t seem to mind the treatment and closed her eyes. Snakes couldn’t really purr, but Harry imagined that the little hisses she let out was as close as she was going to get.

 _~Then why doessn’t hatchling leave thiss bad place?~_ Penny suggested, coiling up on his warm chest. She didn’t mind the stench of sweat that clung to her human, he was her human and she was his snake and that’s all that mattered to Penny. Even if he turned into a mongoose she would still love him, she would never leave her human. Not for the fattest, juiciest rat.

Harry sighed as he traced soothing circles along her brown scales, thinking about how to word his reasons for staying in a way that she would understand. Penny was an adder, a common enough viper in the UK. But she was the only snake that had stayed with him, the others went off to hunt or to mate and often never returned. She was special, which was why, in a place like this, Harry had put a spell on Penny that would make it so that only magicals could see her. He didn’t want the stupid muggles hurting her to get back at him. She had a lot of fun nipping at the heels of the children that bullied him when he told her what he had done. She had a surprisingly thorough knowledge of what magic was and what it could do. Harry had asked her once what she knew about the magical world, but a basic understanding of spell effects was as far as her knowledge went. She didn’t know spell names but she knew what they tasted like and she knew what they could do. Which was more than Harry had been expecting of a simple garden snake.

 _~I’m waiting for ssomething - a letter that will take me from thiss place.~_ He said eventually, idly wondering if the adder had fallen asleep. But he felt her tense up at his words and his hand paused on her scales in worry.

 _~Penny?~_ Harry lifted her up so that he could see her face - even though he knew snakes didn’t have facial expressions, okay, he _knew_ that - but he was sometimes able to tell what sort of things she was feeling. Harry chalked it up to the familiar bond they shared, it was the same sort of thing with Nagini and the Dark Lord. Although Penny wasn’t as big or exotic as Nagini. Harry turned his attention back to the snake in question only to find that she was staring at him, head bobbing from side to side. It looked like she was getting ready to strike but Harry knew she wouldn’t do that, it was probably a nervous tick.

 _~Hatchling is leaving. Hatchling is leaving Penny in this bad place.~_ They weren’t phrased like questions but Harry could feel the uncertainty and….hurt that Penny felt. Harry’s eyes widened in understanding, he had misspoken.

_~You’re coming with me. I would never leave you here. I would never leave you.~_

Penny cocked her tiny head to the side and stuck her tongue out. It was the cutest thing he had ever seen and he had to resist the urge to hug her. She probably wouldn’t like that.

 _~Penny is coming with Hatchling? Oh! Penny is happy~_ She wiggled on his chest, hissing excitedly about leaving the ‘bad place’ and how she might have a home instead of using her human for everything. Harry settled back down on the wooden floor of the attic, the dust tickling his nose as he watched the clouds pass by outside the small skylight above him.

 _~It should be arriving any day now and then we can leave this place~_ Harry said, closing his eyes. He was tired after all that casting and felt that a little nap wouldn’t hurt. He woke up a few hours later to the sun setting and the bell for dinner ringing throughout the estate. Penny was gone, probably out to hunt. He didn’t worry about her, she was pretty good at taking care of herself. With the spell he put on her she was able to go wherever she wanted, the only thing she had to worry about was being stepped on.

Harry sighed and descended to the dining room, the chatter in the room flooding him as he opened the doors. He sat at his usual table, alone and picked at what they considered ‘dinner’. It was basically watery mash potatoes and overcooked veggies with burnt sausages. The only thing that Brutus had that the Dursleys didn’t were regular meals. It didn’t make the shit on his plate taste any better though. Boy, he hoped that letter came soon. He didn’t know how much longer he could endure the hateful stares and the mistreatment. Sure, he would most likely get that at Hogwarts too, but at least he could use magic openly there.

 

It came, it finally came. Harry was reading in the attic when an all too familiar sound graced his ears; the impatient hoot of an owl. He immediately bounced up and was at the bird’s side in an instant, snatching the parchment from its beak none too gently.

There was one window in the attic and it faced the street so Harry was sure to shoo the bird away once he had signed the entrance letter. The barn owl wasn’t too happy with the treatment and squawked irritably, nipping at his fingers. Harry paid no mind to the blood slowly dribbling out of the wound and hastily opened the materials list. This was it, he could finally leave this wretched place.

He had spent ten  _long_ years waiting for this moment. He let out a giddy laugh and sunk back down to the floor where Penny quickly made herself into a cold scarf around his neck so she could get a closer look at what had made her hatchling so excited. Not many things could do that, Penny had observed. Nothing seemed to surprise him either.

Thankfully, Harry read the letter out loud so Penny could understand what it was. She couldn’t read human scribble, but her hatchling said it was enough that she could understand  _him_ so she never worried about it. The parchment smelt funny, like very old magic - but it didn’t feel bad to Penny so she let her human read to her.

 _~Oh, we are leaving ssoon?~_ Penny asked, sticking her tongue out to show her own excitement. Harry grinned, absolutely ecstatic to be going home after all these years. He really had to pat himself on the back for being able to wait this long without killing anyone, though there were a few close calls.

~ _Yess, and we will have sso much fun._ ~ Harry smiled as he got up to go pack. He didn’t have much but he had managed to access his vaults and get some things from Knockturn Alley before he was dumped here by the Dursleys. He would need a new trunk though, one with expansion charms on the inside and different compartments. He needed a place to hide the darker books he had acquired over the years and generally anything he didn’t want anyone else to see.

The next few days were filled with a sense of nostalgia as Harry reminisced over the first time he had stepped into Diagon Alley to get his school supplies. Everything had been so simple back on that day with Hagrid, little Harry was so full of hope.

Harry tried to hold onto that feeling when he arrived on platform 9 and ¾ , it was surprisingly easy considering all the other children were just as excited and it was easy to draw from that. So it was with a bounce to his step that Harry boarded the Express, Penny snuggly hidden beneath his jumper and his new trunk floating behind him.

It obediently flew into the overhead rack when Harry found himself an empty compartment near the end of the third carriage, well away from the one he had chosen in his first life. He so did  _not_ want to run into either Malfoy or Ron at this point. Over the years he had come to loathe his once best friends, and while Draco grew up to be a decent human being, his child self was still an unbearable douche. 

So Harry resolved to soak up as much silence as he could because he had no doubt the Hat would put him in the snake den without a second thought. He would need all the patience he could muster to deal with the old coot. Harry pulled out a book on muggle science to pass the time, brushing up on some of the concepts he hadn’t really gotten the chance to explore once the Muggle War started in earnest.

Harry remembered his second life, how he'd tried so hard to do things  _better_ , do them  _right_. But he'd somehow still found himself back in that nursery. His third was spent in America, he couldn't stand to watch his home be destroyed again. That was the life where he'd lived long enough to see the Muggles find out about the Magical World, and the chaos that ensued. Despite this, it was his fourth go around that broke him.

Why was he being punished like this? Cursed to forever be starting over, to never have the peace he'd so desperately sought after? These were the questions he asked himself while his mother once again died protecting him.

But then, as if to say 'fuck you', he found the original script of Beetle Bard's 'Tale of the Three Brothers' and he lost it. Gringotts had never fully recovered from the magical backlash of Harry's anger. 'Master of Death' was not just a fancy title mortals thought up to explain how the three most powerful objects in existence came to be. No,  _lucky_ for Harry, there was so much more to it.

"Heart's desire, huh?" Harry whispered as he stared at the pages before him without really seeing the words. True, he'd gotten his answer, it just wasn't the solution he was hoping for. He didn't even know what his heart's desire was, other than for this nightmare to end, of course--

A sudden knock startled him out of his memories and Harry looked toward the door. With a wave of his hand, the tinted window lightened to reveal the one person he so did not want to see right now. Harry sighed, the tail end of it becoming a frustrated groan as another knock sounded, more insistent this time.

He debated with himself on whether to let her in or just ignore her. He doubted she would leave though, Dumblefuck probably told her to find him since he didn't encounter the Weasleys on the Muggle side of the platform.

Another knock and it felt like Harry's well-honed, Ten-Years-I-Suffered-For- _This_ patience was already hanging on by a thread. She hadn't even done anything to him in this life and he already hated her. Maybe it was the three or four other times she'd betrayed him. In every life he'd given her the chance to change, to be better, and every time he was disappointed.

He was done.

Decision made, Harry darkened the window once more, strengthened the lock, and cast a silencing ward. He sighed in quiet relief when the knocking stopped as well as the 'Oh! How RUDE can you be? Open up! Open up I say!'.

He sat back, stretching out on the bench, and watched the scenery fly by. He wondered, as he was slowly lulled into sleep, if his plan would work, if this would be his last life.

**Author's Note:**

> Heyo!   
> Hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> Any suggestions? Maybe we could brainstorm on motivations, character reactions, plot lines? Critiques? universe lore? It keeps me motivated to keep writing as I always start of with only a vague idea of what I want - which would leave a lot up to debate!
> 
> So come! Discuss with me! I would highly appreciate it!


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